National News Briefs; 2 Skin Cancer Vaccines Showing Promise in Tests

Published: March 3, 1998

Two vaccines to make the body attack the deadly skin cancer melanoma are showing early promise in patients, researchers are reporting in the March issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The patients on whom it was tested had advanced cancer, and while tumors shrank in some, it is too early to know whether the therapy will help patients live longer, the researchers said.

Melanoma vaccines have long been tried in patients to treat the disease rather than prevent it, and some past studies have reported they prolong life.

One study was done by Dr. Steven Rosenberg and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute. Their vaccine using a modified bit of protein the immune system can recognize on cancer cells was tested on 31 patients. In the other study, researchers from Germany and Switzerland report that their vaccine shrank or eliminated tumors in 5 of 16 patients.